I answered craftily that I should like to hear the arguments on both sides of the question, and requested them to choose which of them should be the first speaker. Whereupon, they halted in the road, disputing which should have the preference, and were like to have spent the morning before they had settled this, as neither would yield to the other, if I had not made a movement towards the gate.
“Sir,” said I, turning to one of them—they had now ranged themselves on either side of me as we walked on—”what say you? That the holy Patrick was——?”
“I say he was an Irishman,” burst in the other, on my left, before I had finished the sentence.
“An Irishman!” exclaimed the Franciscan on my right, “an Irishman! Not he. He was a Scot!”
“I say he was an Irishman!”
“And I maintain he was a Scot!”
“An Irishman!”
“A Scot!”
Their voices rose into shoutings and roarings, as they glared across me with angry eyes.